Changing Stance, Administration Now Defends Insurance Mandate as a Tax

This is a political forum that is non-biased/non-partisan and treats every persons position on topics equally. This debate forum is not aligned to any political party. In today's politics, many ideas are split between and even within all the political parties. Often we find ourselves agreeing on one platform but some topics break our mold. We are here to discuss them in a civil political debate. If this is your first visit to our political forums, be sure to check out the FAQ and RULES. Registering for debate politics is necessary before posting. Register today to participate and remove the ads - it's free!

Changing Stance, Administration Now Defends Insurance Mandate as a Tax

WASHINGTON — When Congress required most Americans to obtain health insurance or pay a penalty, Democrats denied that they were creating a new tax. But in court, the Obama administration and its allies now defend the requirement as an exercise of the government’s “power to lay and collect taxes.”

And that power, they say, is even more sweeping than the federal power to regulate interstate commerce.

Administration officials say the tax argument is a linchpin of their legal case in defense of the health care overhaul and its individual mandate, now being challenged in court by more than 20 states and several private organizations.

Under the legislation signed by President Obama in March, most Americans will have to maintain “minimum essential coverage” starting in 2014. Many people will be eligible for federal subsidies to help them pay premiums.

Gee, those crazy GOP Tea Party Idiot Rednecks calling the health care mandate a tax are just tryin to scare people and confuse them!

“For us to say that you’ve got to take a responsibility to get health insurance is absolutely not a tax increase,” the president said last September, in a spirited exchange with George Stephanopoulos on the ABC News program “This Week.”

When Mr. Stephanopoulos said the penalty appeared to fit the dictionary definition of a tax, Mr. Obama replied, “I absolutely reject that notion.”

Oh snap, guess what, Obama and Co. now admit, they just gave EVERY AMERICAN A BIG FAT NEW TAX.

These are from your own article. Obama will win this battle in court easily.

Under the Constitution, Congress can exercise its taxing power to provide for the “general welfare.” It is for Congress, not courts, to decide which taxes are “conducive to the general welfare,” the Supreme Court said 73 years ago in upholding the Social Security Act.

Jack M. Balkin, a professor at Yale Law School who supports the new law, said, “The tax argument is the strongest argument for upholding” the individual-coverage requirement.

You should have read more carefully over your article and realized that this had nothing to do with Obama flip flopping over whether or not it was a tax, rather that Obama has found a perfectly viable legal argument for showing that the Constitution was perfectly fine with forcing people to pay for health insurance.

You stepped in your own bear trap. And I could care less about what Obama flip flopped about he's a politican and both sides of the isle have been doing that since day one.

Mr. Obama “has not been honest with the American people about the nature of this bill,” Mr. Balkin said last month at a meeting of the American Constitution Society, a progressive legal organization. “This bill is a tax. Because it’s a tax, it’s completely constitutional.”

Its a stupid idea for the tea parties to try and make the notion that Obama is violating the constitution. He's a constitutional scholar and former constitutional professor along with a brilliant lawyer who deeply respects the document and will wipe the floor with anyone trying to use it as leverage over his administration.

These are from your own article. Obama will win this battle in court easily.

You should have read more carefully over your article and realized that this had nothing to do with Obama flip flopping over whether or not it was a tax, rather that Obama has found a perfectly viable legal argument for showing that the Constitution was perfectly fine with forcing people to pay for health insurance.

You stepped in your own bear trap. And I could care less about what Obama flip flopped about he's a politican and both sides of the isle have been doing that since day one.

Its a stupid idea for the tea parties to try and make the notion that Obama is violating the constitution. He's a constitutional scholar and former constitutional professor along with a brilliant lawyer who deeply respects the document and will wipe the floor with anyone trying to use it as leverage over his administration.

Well I suppose you have a point... oh wait, no, no you have no point at all.

A TAX, cannot force an Average American CITIZEN to purchase a PRODUCT OR SERVICE he may or may not wish to purchase. Freedom, Liberty Trump any thing some worthless "progressive" legal group wants to claim. Obama's so far left he thinks this makes sense, and only those that far left with him would accept such nonsense a mere tax.

That's the failing of the entire affair. We are "Forced" to purchase a service, whether we WANT IT OR NOT, just to live in this country. That, is not acceptable, and will be struck down by the courts.

Its not a product or service it promotes the general welfare of people in the country. Forcing people to purchase insurance lowers the cost of insurance for everyone. Forcing people to pay for insurance and have free check ups prevents many emergency room visits that put a strain on the healthcare industry and raises the prices of insurance for people.

You're not going to beat Obama at his own game. Constitutional law is his domain.

These are from your own article. Obama will win this battle in court easily.

You should have read more carefully over your article and realized that this had nothing to do with Obama flip flopping over whether or not it was a tax, rather that Obama has found a perfectly viable legal argument for showing that the Constitution was perfectly fine with forcing people to pay for health insurance.

You stepped in your own bear trap. And I could care less about what Obama flip flopped about he's a politican and both sides of the isle have been doing that since day one.

Its a stupid idea for the tea parties to try and make the notion that Obama is violating the constitution. He's a constitutional scholar and former constitutional professor along with a brilliant lawyer who deeply respects the document and will wipe the floor with anyone trying to use it as leverage over his administration.

Just so we are clear, you are fine when Obama lies. It is just when the other guys do we should be aghast!

Its not a product or service it promotes the general welfare of people in the country. Forcing people to purchase insurance lowers the cost of insurance for everyone. Forcing people to pay for insurance and have free check ups prevents many emergency room visits that put a strain on the healthcare industry and raises the prices of insurance for people.

You're not going to beat Obama at his own game. Constitutional law is his domain.

HAHAHAHA Constitutional... law is his domain? ROFL. The man is a ****ing moron when it comes to the constitution.

If you look at the victories and failures of the civil rights movement and its litigation strategy in the court, I think where it succeeded was to invest formal rights in previously dispossessed people, so that now I would have the right to vote. I would now be able to sit at the lunch counter and order and as long as I could pay for it I’d be OK

But, the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and of more basic issues such as political and economic justice in society. To that extent, as radical as I think people try to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn't that radical. It didn't break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution, at least as it's been interpreted, and the Warren Court interpreted in the same way, that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties. Says what the states can't do to you. Says what the federal government can't do to you, but doesn't say what the federal government or state government must do on your behalf.

And that hasn't shifted and one of the, I think, tragedies of the civil rights movement was because the civil rights movement became so court-focused I think there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalition of powers through which you bring about redistributive change. In some ways we still suffer from that.

And it is a Service, you are FORCED to purchase insurance. We do not live ina Communist/Socialist society where you are responsible for anyone other than yourself. People liek you, need to move ot Europe, and embrace your desire to have others tell you how to live. Obama and the Left are gonna get bitch slapped in Nov, and O is out in 2012, he'll go down as the biggest failure since Carter. Sadly we'll spend 20 years trying to correct the disasters he has put into motion.

You don't understand at all. They already showed that such a concept was constituional with social security, in which they took a small portion of your pay check away each time until you retired. They've already shown that it will hold up in court. The article is showing that Obama found has already found a legal solution on the anticipation that the mandate would be challenged as unconstitutional.